1965 1554B and 1971 1554B2P

[MagicMo]

Hi,
I have found these two phones:
The black one is marked 1965 under the 1554-b (hard to see in the pic) and the insides are marketed 2-1966.
The yellow is marked 1971 on the inside and 77 on the outside.
Both have ten buttons with spacers. I'm guessing they just changed out the shell?
Any info would be appreciated!
Thx
Mo

[poplar1]

Yes, after a certain point they stocked only the shells with 12 holes so used the adapter to fill the * and # holes when a set had a 10-button dial.

I'm surprised that the one phone is dated 1971 since IIRC the 10-button dial was M.D. (Manufacture Discontinued) by about 1968. Could you check the date on the dial? Perhaps they reused an older dial on a 1971 phone?

There seem to be a lot of the 10-button sets that were reissued with the 12-button housings both from Illinois Bell and also C&P Telephone. There have even been 1500D2Ms (modular) found. Per my friend Bill, who retired from the WE Service Center in Atlanta, at his location they never reissued 10-button sets but converted them all to 12-button.

10 buttons were sufficient if your central office was Crossbar (or Step-by-Step with Tone Converters). In areas with 1ESS or 1AESS, many of the feature codes used the * and # buttons, so sets with 12-button dials were installed. (If you had a rotary phone or 10-button Touch-Tone set, for most codes you could dial 11 instead of * and  pause (timeout) for #.)

[WesternElectricBen]

Mo,

Great to see a post from you, I'm sure it wasn't just me who was wondering where you went!

I also think those phones are weird that they do that, though sometimes you find ones, that don't even have the blanks in the keypad, and it is just an awkward hole..

Ben

[baldopeacock]

There seem to be a lot of the 10-button sets that were reissued with the 12-button housings both from Illinois Bell ...

When I graduated from college in '77, I moved into a basement apartment.  Illinois Bell installed a red 1500 with the 12-button faceplate and fillers for the star/pound key holes.   I can't recall now if it was also modularized, though.

[Just4Phones]

Mo,

Great to see a post from you, I'm sure it wasn't just me who was wondering where you went!

I also think those phones are weird that they do that, though sometimes you find ones, that don't even have the blanks in the keypad, and it is just an awkward hole..

Ben

I agree with Ben.  I too was wondering where you went to.  Welcome back and hope all is well

Joel

[Greg G.]

Are these from your Dad's stash?